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A hostage taker's dream—Obamacare—temporarily has gone into hiding. There's no way the White House will give Republicans the opportunity to drag the landmark law into the debate on debt ceilings and spending cuts.

The president's signature law takes full effect on Jan. 1, 2014, and he intends to let it rip without major legislative tweaks. The White House is taking a wee gamble: No law ever passed by Congress has been perfect, let alone one that runs close to 2,000 pages and more than 300,000 words. That's why wags compare Congress's bill-making process to the manufacture of sausages. If the health-care bill's rollout is rocky, it would seriously complicate the 2014 election campaigns of Democratic congressional candidates, including 20 running for Senate seats. And according to credible critics from the right and the left, Obamacare badly needs some fixes.

On paper, Katherine Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has broad power to tweak the legislation to correct flaws. The White House has confidence in this process. Not everyone in the president's party does, however. Back in December, 18 Democratic senators, most of whom had voted for a 2.3% excise tax on medical devices to help pay for the law, had second thoughts. They petitioned Senate Leader Harry Reid for a legislative fix that would have delayed implementation of the levy, pending further deliberations. Reid didn't act, in part because the White House doesn't share the senators' concern, so the tax kicked in on Jan. 1. Obama himself sees the need for Congress to amend the law so that HHS can begin to grant "innovation waivers" in 2014 to states with plans that can deliver health care as inexpensively and broadly as Obamacare. Under the current law, HHS can't grant a waiver until 2017. This is no big deal, but don't expect to see the request go before Congress until the deficit fight is over.

ONE MAJOR FLAW FREQUENTLY cited by critics of all stripes is that Obamacare provides perverse incentives for individuals to pay a relatively small fine in lieu of buying health insurance because they can wait until they actually are sick to purchase a policy. Such behavior could beggar the new insurance system. Only Congress can fix it. Obama is willing to wait until next year to see what happens.

Make no mistake, the Republicans on the Hill would love to drag the president's beloved Obamacare into the budget fray as a hostage. The battered GOP needs all the leverage it can get to battle the popular chief executive. Obama says he won't agree to deep budget cuts until the Republicans agree to more revenue increases on top of the higher taxes on the rich that they acceded to on New Year's Day. Republicans have vowed not to raise taxes again. The GOP is threatening to shut down the government if Obama won't bend, which already is a losing gambit. Last week, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ordinarily a GOP ally, said this must not happen.

Republicans have indicated that they want to avoid sequestration, the steep and indiscriminate budget cuts that would kick in if no agreement is reached by the end of March. So they don't appear to have a strong hand to play.

The president is too smooth a poker player to toss them his Obamacare ace. He will keep his health-care law off the public radar until late this year when the countdown clock is half run out and budget-fight tempers have cooled off. But by not tweaking the law, Obama is endangering his legacy.